As Jennifer Hiller reports for the San Antonio Express-News, fatal car wrecks in the Eagle Ford Shale area went up 40 percent in 2012. In some South Texas counties, like Karnes County, the number of collisions with trucks went up 1,000 percent. The president of the Texas Motor Vehicle Association says mostly car drivers are at fault for the accidents, not the truckers.
But that assertion doesn’t quite square with what one local resident said about what she’s seen. “I saw one pass a school bus,” said Karee Clark, referring to the big rigs and oil tankers. “I couldn’t believe it.”
She also said other erratic behavior on the part of truckers has happened “over and over and over again,” referring to trucks passing other vehicles on hills (obviously dangerous for line of sight reasons) and some truckers straight out running cars off roads.
If anything, the rise in truck accidents is a symptom of cramped roads. Rural roads, especially, typically aren’t designed and built to handle the kind of traffic created by the South Texas oil and gas boom. Hiller reports that some roads used to have 200 cars and trucks on them per day.
Now these same roads have 2,400 cars and trucks on them every day.
It’s the classic recipe, quite frankly, for motor vehicle accidents.
If you’ve been injured in an accident involving a big rig or tanker because of the Eagle Ford Shale oil and gas boom, remember that you’ve got legal options for holding the negligent driver responsible.
Source: Eagle Ford fatal crashes up 40 percent